I currently have four soundcards in my machine. I wish that iTunes allowed you to switch to different soundcard outputs. Oh well. Most pro-level software will allow you to switch things around, I just wish that iTunes did so I could listen to music through my studio monitors occasionally instead of just my Klipsch 2.1's. I know that I could hook things up differently, but that would be a major pain.
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A feature that I wish that iTunes had (soundcard related)
- Thread starter Lyquist
- Start date
Ah... that's a shame. J.River does actually play back secured AAC tracks through the Quicktime engine (through the soundcard selected in j.River and not necessarily the default soundcard) but there's a couple of seconds delay between each track starting up - a DRM issue for sure.
As Mister X pointed out you can change your default sound device, provided other apps you're using allow you to route sound to the cards that you want to use - but I found that very cumbersome even with just two soundcards per machine when setting the 'listening card' - i.e. the best soundcard out of the two - as default.
This is a great argument toward ripping the stupid DRM crap out of the files so you can use a good media player like Winamp or Foobar2000.
Both Winamp and foobar have ASIO output plugins available, and if you have a pro level soundcard, it is going to have ASIO support, and will sound far superior to itunes access to the card via the kmixer. If you do not have native ASIO support, then you can install ASIO4ALL and use almost any soundcard.
For music listening on the PC, the first thing you should be doing is bypassing the windows mixers, via ASIO or kernel streaming. There must be some way to play your files in a better media player, but if not, it kind of makes me sad that you invested so much money in defective files.
Both Winamp and foobar have ASIO output plugins available, and if you have a pro level soundcard, it is going to have ASIO support, and will sound far superior to itunes access to the card via the kmixer. If you do not have native ASIO support, then you can install ASIO4ALL and use almost any soundcard.
For music listening on the PC, the first thing you should be doing is bypassing the windows mixers, via ASIO or kernel streaming. There must be some way to play your files in a better media player, but if not, it kind of makes me sad that you invested so much money in defective files.
I don't consider the files defective. I can still burn them to CD and play them in my car or whatever. I'm not an audiophile, so I can't really tell the difference between the iTunes files and regular CD's to be honest. If I had some better gear, I may be able to tell.
Ahh, well yes you said you had studio monitors and I figure if you have multiple sound cards one of them is prosumer level.
You can get great sound from monitors and a good soundcard if you set it up properly, what kind of soundcard(s) do you have and what studio monitors, amp, ect?
You could burn the DRM stuff to disk and rip it to another format, but re compressing the files would further degrade their quality, and it is a big hassle. The other suggestions about selecting windows default audio device will allow you to use itunes though, but you may have to go into the control panel every time you want to switch between cards.
You can get great sound from monitors and a good soundcard if you set it up properly, what kind of soundcard(s) do you have and what studio monitors, amp, ect?
You could burn the DRM stuff to disk and rip it to another format, but re compressing the files would further degrade their quality, and it is a big hassle. The other suggestions about selecting windows default audio device will allow you to use itunes though, but you may have to go into the control panel every time you want to switch between cards.
I'm sorry, but that simply isn't realistic. There's no sound quality chasm between outputting via ASIO and pushing audio through the kmixer. It's obviously better via ASIO, but whether or not it's audibly better on his equipment is questionable. I mean, they're M-Audio Studiophile monitors, not Genelecs. You make it sound like it's the difference between a PC speaker and a Paradigm Studio-series speaker.
Some have commented that degradation of XP's resampling method (even before SP1) is immeasurable via loopback testing, Lyquist, so go ahead and chew on that before making any decisions (like ditching an entire library of purchased music).
I'm not going to ditch iTunes anytime soon, and I will continue to buy my music there. I like their customer service and they have always been good to me, but then again I've probably spent about $2,000 or so on my video and music collection. I currently have around 125 full albums that I've purchased and several seasons of different TV shows that I've purchased as well. I do not pirate music or video at all, so iTunes is a good fit for me.